


Don't question your luck

by Wolviecat



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, M/M, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:07:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24338638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolviecat/pseuds/Wolviecat
Summary: There are rumours about a witch working for the continental army.
Relationships: Alexander Hamilton/John Laurens
Comments: 3
Kudos: 41
Collections: Banned Together Bingo 2020





	Don't question your luck

**Author's Note:**

> For the Banned Together 2020 line 1 row 5: "Evil Gods", though it drifted more towards dark magic.

It has started as a rumor in the British army.

They said there was a witch working for the Colonist, casting curses, healing the wounded, even raising the dead. They said general Wahington sold his own mortal soul to pay for her services. They said that she even put a spell on the king himself, robbing him of his sanity.

Colonist laughed at their superstitions. After all, if they really had magic on their side, they wouldn't be going hungry for days or seeing their friends die from an infected wound or from drinking dirty water.

It was a pretty bitter laught.

But privately, after a few pints, people around Washington admitted that there is something strange going on. Nothing huge – no resurrections or demons hunting the red coats. But sometimes, the provisions lasted a bit longer, or the enemy bayonet just grazed when it would kill. They've just called a guardian angel instead of a witch. Lafayette swore it was one of the dozen of his patron saints who kept him from bleeding out when a bullet hit his leg. Something warned Hercules about a traitor among the Sons of Liberty. They all have their own little stories of weird luck and coincidence. And they all agreed that whatever this supernatural force is, it took a special liking in John Laurens.

To tell the truth, John never cared much about his life. Not that he actually tried to end it – even with the sad pieces that was left from his faith he knew that was a sin. But this doesn't keep him from regarding his own survival as a mere afterthought, something much less important that a battle won. Wounds and pain were just inconveniences on the path to freedom. And if he sometimes stared down the barrel of the red coat’s weapon? It was a war, and they all have sacrifices to make.

More than once, the bullet got jammed in the barrel, or someone shot the British soldier before he could pull the trigger.

More than once, John had to hide a pang of disappointment when he got to breathe for another day. But he tried not to think too deep about his invisible protector. While he sometimes despised it for meddling with his fate, he couldn’t ignore the way it helped his friends, how it helped their cause. And even if he could, there was still Alex and the way his face always lit up when he saw him return from another battle unharmed.

The winter in the Valley Forge tested them all. Cold, hunger and sickness killed or maimed hundreds, and even the bravest of them sometimes seem to lose hope.

And Alexander was taking the punishing conditions hard. The only thing keeping him alive was pure spite, and even that was running low as the weeks progressed. He wasn’t used to winter – even back in New York, the first cold day had him wearing most of his clothes at once and stuffing newspaper under his vest to keep the chill out – and the constant lack of food stripped him of any nature defenses he had. His tan skin grew pale, dried from wind and spotted red. He often found him huddled at the table, fingers blue and cramped around the pen, still trying to work despite tremors in his hand causing him to smudge the ink around and starting the same sentence over and over again. John knew him too well to try and convince him to take a break. Alexander would rather keel over frozen solid than to abandon his position. At night, they slept in the same cot, so he could feel Alexander’s chest moving and be sure he is still alive.

It was in the deepest days of the winter when John suddenly woke up colder than before. The spot next to him was empty, only the rumpled blanked marking the place where Alexander went to sleep just a couple of hours before. Only the cold seeping into his bones prevented John from running out as he was. He put on all his clothes as fast as he could and run out, trying not to to think about Alexander’s coat still folded over the chair.

He still hoped that Alexander was summoned to Washington for a late night meeting, but his hopes were soon crushed when he came face to face with their general clearly just waking up. His visits to other higher-ups in the camp was also fruitless and only helped to spread the panic more. He almost hoped Alexander fell ill – it was still a better option that disappearing without a trace – but he wasn’t in the infirmary, either.

It took almost an hour of searching and rising fear before John came across a row of footprints heading somewhere deep into the forest. They were relatively fresh – new snow did not blurred their crisp edges much. The reasonable thing would be to get someone as a back up, take his horse, his gun, or at least let somebody know where he is going. But his heart was screaming at him to go right the second, to not waste any time, that Alexander could be hurt, could be dying…

He took off down the snowy path into the forest, lungs burning from the freezing cold, hoping, praying, that he will arrive in time.

He didn’t know how long he was running. He could only feel his legs cramping painfully, tears freezing on his cheeks and hearth hammering under his rib cage, threatening to break the bones like twigs. There was a dim light somewhere in the distance, marking the place where the footprints seemed to be heading. John was almost afraid to blink, scared that the light could vanish in a moment and leave him stranded in the dark.

Finally, he broke trough the bushes on the edge of a small clearing.

The light brighten suddenly, causing John’s eyes to water. Through tears, he could see a blurred figure sitting in the center of the clearing. There was a voice, but no matter how much he was straining his ears, he couldn’t make out the words. Only the urgent tone of it, and the painful rasping.

“Alexander?” he called. The figure turned its head. John could see Alexander’s face, strained and pale in the unnatural light. He smiled.

“Don’t be afraid,” Alexander – or something wearing his skin – said. “It will only take a second.”

A second John wasn’t willing to give it.

How do you fight a demon that have possessed your friend? How do you do so without killing or hurting the one you love?

John didn’t know, but he couldn’t let his fear to stop him from acting. He run into the clearing, knife clutched white-knuckled in his hand, ready to strike in the blink of an eye.

The thing in Alexander’s skin flinched, hand in front of it in a deceptively human gesture.

“Wait!” it screamed.

When John did not stop, it turned it’s face toward the sky and open it’s mouth in something that almost sounded like a sob. Flash of light illuminated the forest, burning at John’s skin, and a strange gust of wind knocked him down.

When John managed to get back on his feet, Alexander was lying curled on the ground, surrounded by something that looked like a burned pieces of paper. He turned him to his back, desperately searching for any sign of life in his face.

“What happened?” Alexander voice was slurred, like he was waking up from a deep sleep.

“I send that… thing away. It will never hurt you again.”

In the next second Alexander was siting up, wild eyes looking around, before he grasped John shoulders with a force that had to leave bruises.

“What have you done?” He released John to start rummaging in the burned papers, trying desperately to piece them back together.

“I’ve knew what they are planing to do, I knew they moves, I knew…”

He doesn’t even look at John when he started back towards their camp.

They somehow survived the winter in the Valley Forge.

The supernatural luck that seemed to help them in their most dire times disappeared, and as the time went, they forget about it. Even Alexander never spoke about that night in the forest.

At the Combahee river, bleeding from the wound in his stomach, John could not stop thinking about what would happened if he didn’t chase their luck away.


End file.
